Don’t assume that Doom 4 is awesome

Doom 4 publisher Bethesda has warned against assuming that the new shooter is awesome just because of the series legacy. The company’s VP of marketing and PR Pete Hines has stressed that Doom needs to reinvent and prove itself all over again.

The shooter will make a behind closed doors appearance at QuakeCon this year, but to tide you over until then you can check out the Doom 4 reveal trailer instead.

Speaking with MCV, Hines recalled how the Wolfenstein brand stumbled for a while before returning with a bang in Wolfenstein: The New Order. He effectively said that this needs to happen with Doom 4.

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On Wolfenstein, Hines explained, “The last couple of games were either ‘ok’ or ‘not great’. It wasn’t a franchise where people were desperate for the next one. Wolfenstein isn’t Uncharted. We knew this would take some explaining. But developer Machine Games has now untarnished the IP.”

Then on Doom 4 he went on, “We view that similarly to Wolfenstein, because it’s been so long since the last Doom game. We are going in as if we need to prove ourselves all over again. We have no free passes. Nobody will assume this is going to be awesome.

“We are going to have to prove that this is something that’s going to be fun and different that you need to pay attention to. That has to be our default position, we can’t be: ‘It’s Doom, of course you’re going to play it’. But that just makes us work harder.”

What do you think Doom 4 needs to accomplish to return to form and capture the modern shooter mind-set? Or perhaps you feel it should stick to its old-school roots?